A complex interplay of factors may explain why George Miller’s highly anticipated addition to his Mad Max saga underperformed at the box office.
By Vikram Murthi
George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a film years in the making, presents a familiar Hollywood narrative: a passion project struggling to find its footing in an increasingly challenging entertainment landscape. As the fifth installment in the Mad Max franchise and a prequel to the critically acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Furiosa debuted over Memorial Day weekend to disappointing box office numbers, barely surpassing The Garfield Movie. Subsequent weeks have seen a sharp decline in its earnings. Despite a significant portion of Furiosa‘s budget being subsidized by the Australian government, easing the financial pressure somewhat, the film has clearly fallen short of industry projections, even if it manages to eventually become profitable.
Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. (Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)
Pinpointing a single cause for Furiosa‘s underwhelming commercial performance is impossible; instead, a confluence of interconnected elements likely contributed to its box office woes. One immediate factor was its pre-arranged loss of premium large-format (PLF) screens – the very screens where it garnered the strongest returns and higher ticket prices crucial to its domestic earnings – to Bad Boys: Ride or Die in its third week. Furthermore, the Mad Max franchise might lack the widespread brand recognition enjoyed by other major intellectual properties, particularly given that Max Rockatansky himself is not a central figure in Furiosa. (It’s worth recalling that even Fury Road, while successful, wasn’t a runaway box office sensation.) More broadly, theatrical ticket sales are experiencing a general decline due to various shifts in media consumption – the rise of streaming platforms and video-on-demand services, coupled with the lingering effects of the pandemic and the WGA/SAG strikes, which have disrupted both moviegoing habits and the film release schedule. Notably, Memorial Day weekend in 2024 recorded the lowest total box office revenue since 1995. In this evolving landscape, a film like Miller’s – a gritty, sprawling, post-apocalyptic character-driven piece – faced an uphill battle for commercial success. However, it seems unfair to place the blame for broader industry trends solely on the director and his ambitious vision.
In Furiosa, Miller prioritizes immersing viewers in the stark realities of his dystopian world over delivering a purely adrenaline-fueled experience. This deliberate tonal shift, while artistically admirable, likely further hampered its commercial appeal. While the film certainly features spectacular vehicular action and violent confrontations, its overall tone is a significant departure from the relentless, high-octane thrills of Fury Road. Furiosa leans more towards a novelistic, ambiguous, and unremittingly bleak narrative, resembling a tragic fable of revenge set in a broken world rather than a conventional action blockbuster.
This deliberate, almost self-aware construction of Furiosa extends beyond its tone into its very storytelling approach. Miller employs a mythic framework, complete with distinct chapter divisions and an omniscient narrator, shaping not only the narrative but also the intricate relationships that drive the plot. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), the flamboyant leader of a nomadic biker horde and the film’s primary antagonist, abducts a young Furiosa (Alyla Browne), forcing her to witness the brutal crucifixion of her mother before adopting her into his gang as a captive daughter, harboring the futile hope she will lead him to the verdant Green Place, her homeland. Dementus constantly vies for dominance and scarce resources within the radioactive wasteland of Australia against Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), the skeletal-masked overlord whose coterie of grotesque advisors informs his rule over the Citadel and his crucial trade negotiations with Gas Town, a vital oil refinery, and Bullet Farm, a crucial ammunition and mining operation.
Meanwhile, Furiosa is consumed by a desperate yearning to return to her Green Place, while fiercely guarding its location from the marauders who surround her. Initially depicted as a spirited young girl attempting to harvest fruit, her capture marks a metaphorical fall from grace, transforming her into a prisoner under Dementus’s control. When Dementus trades her to Immortan Joe following an invasion of Gas Town, Furiosa cleverly disguises herself as a mute boy to avoid becoming a breeder for Joe’s wives. As Furiosa matures into a young woman (now portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy), she strategically integrates herself into Joe’s ranks over years, becoming a skilled mechanic. Her sharp intellect and unwavering resolve impress Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), Joe’s respected driver, who mentors her and secretly desires to assist her escape.
Because Furiosa is a prequel, the audience enters with pre-existing knowledge: Furiosa will evolve into the formidable, shaved-head warrior embodied by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. We also know she will never return to the Green Place, and that both Dementus and Praetorian Jack are destined for grim fates. To counteract this lack of narrative surprise, Miller infuses Furiosa’s journey with a palpable sense of somber emotion. However, as the character endures years and traverses vast stretches of desert, navigating numerous hostile environments – reminiscent of an 18th-century picaresque hero – a critical sense of dynamism is often lost. Furiosa doesn’t aim to inspire awe through sheer, relentless action in the same vein as Fury Road. Instead, at times it evokes only a detached appreciation, a frustrating outcome considering the film’s intermittent flashes of brilliance. Despite its imperfections, Furiosa strives for a kind of fabulist maximalism that the current market rarely acknowledges, much less rewards.
Cover of The Nation Magazine March 2025 Issue.
Mad Max (1979), Miller’s directorial debut, was partly inspired by the horrific car accidents he witnessed during his childhood and his time as a doctor in Sydney. Co-writer and former journalist James McCausland also channeled the simmering frustration of Australian drivers during the 1973 OPEC oil crisis into the screenplay. (“A couple of oil strikes that hit many pumps revealed the ferocity with which Australians would defend their right to fill a tank,” he recalled.) This socio-political context deeply informed the dystopian reality of the series, initially portraying a society teetering on the brink of complete societal breakdown before evolving into a post-apocalyptic hellscape where survival hinges on the desperate scramble for dwindling resources.
Grief, and particularly the protection of children, forms the emotional core of the series’ hard-earned optimism, a stark contrast to the desolate landscapes depicted in the films. Mel Gibson’s Max is driven to become a vengeful nomad after a biker gang brutally murders his wife and son in Mad Max, instilling in him a profound drive to protect the innocent whenever possible. In The Road Warrior (1981), the haunted Max defends a feral, mute child from vicious gangs, and in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), he guides a tribe of lost children, descendants of plane crash survivors, to safety. Fury Road’s Max, now played by Tom Hardy, is haunted by visions of a child he failed to save.
Furiosa’s portrayal of a stolen childhood, defined by abduction, violence, and the constant fight for survival, is a natural progression of the series’ thematic concern with safeguarding the young as essential for humanity’s future. Browne’s portrayal of young Furiosa evokes a more restrained version of Road Warrior’s feral child, and Taylor-Joy’s adult Furiosa could easily be placed amongst Thunderdome’s band of survivors. Yet, Miller underscores both the uniqueness of Furiosa’s resilient and solitary nature in the face of trauma and its inherent connection to Max’s origins. Furiosa suggests that while individual paths are distinct, they exist within a continuum of shared experiences across time.
Noah Wyle in a promotional image for “The Pitt,” a hospital drama.
Both Browne and Taylor-Joy deliver performances imbued with a raw, visceral fury that commands attention. Taylor-Joy’s visual echoes of Theron’s portrayal in Fury Road lend a poignant layer to the character’s suffering and sacrifices. We witness Furiosa endure relentless brutality, escape sexual assault as a child, and suffer dismemberment and torture as a young adult, ultimately achieving a form of retribution that is not intended to be a crowd-pleasing spectacle.
“It’s mind-numbing that Furiosa hasn’t grossed $50 million domestically,” an unnamed studio executive confessed to Deadline in early June. Considering the film’s substantial runtime, somber tone, and deliberate pacing, it’s almost surprising it achieved even that level of box office revenue. While Miller endeavors to imbue Furiosa’s heroic journey with the gravitas of a dark, ancient legend, the film’s epic scale paradoxically highlights the weightlessness of certain key sequences (particularly many of Dementus’s earlier scenes) and an overemphasis on its own mythos, which at times feels forced and self-conscious. Miller seems to equate applying a legendary polish with genuinely embodying legendary qualities.
The Mad Max series’s loosely interconnected nature has allowed each film to develop a distinct aesthetic and narrative identity. However, because Furiosa is explicitly designed as a prequel to Fury Road, it inevitably suffers by comparison. Fury Road effectively throws the audience directly into the action, minimizing traditional world-building to brief lines of dialogue and fleeting visual details. This approach makes the high-stakes action feel both immediate and organic, and allows the characters’ profound emotions to emerge naturally rather than feeling predetermined. Consider how briefly Fury Road mentions Max’s universal blood donor status at the outset, and how movingly this detail pays off by the film’s conclusion.
Furiosa reverses this formula, becoming partially preoccupied with needlessly explaining a world that Fury Road had already richly textured through implication. We are shown Bullet Farm and Gas Town in detail, locations that were previously just evocative names existing in the audience’s imagination. We witness how Furiosa loses her arm, an event Miller commendably attempts to imbue with pathos, yet it can’t escape the feeling of being a narratively required element. (Theron reportedly utilized the script of Furiosa, which Miller completed over a decade prior, as background material for her performance in Fury Road, aligning with the latter film’s preference for suggestion over explicit explanation.) On paper, Furiosa offers “more of what we want” in relation to Fury Road’s established world, but much of Fury Road’s success stemmed from its strategic withholding of exposition and its unwavering commitment to formal cinematic brilliance.
Predictably, yet undeniably exciting, Furiosa truly shines during its vehicular action sequences. Watching Taylor-Joy and Burke collaborate to repel an aerial assault on the War Rig or evade a Dementus ambush delivers the kind of visceral rush that only Miller can orchestrate. Even with a greater reliance on “expressionistic” CGI in this installment, Miller’s action cinematography remains unparalleled in its kinetic energy, with editors Margaret Sixel and Eliot Knapman seamlessly weaving together a complex network of interlocking skirmishes across multiple characters into a chaotic yet coherent matrix. While Furiosa treats its origin story with the reverence of an ancient, future-transmitted text, it is most compelling when it echoes the core strengths of earlier Mad Max films – the high-speed car chases, the relentless tension, and the ever-present sense of peril and perpetual motion.
Miller is no stranger to expensive commercial disappointments. The box office failure of Babe: Pig in the City (1998) – a darker, more complex sequel to the family-friendly Babe (1995) – contributed to the dismissal of two high-ranking Universal executives. Miller’s Dr. D Studios, a digital animation studio established in Sydney in 2007, closed just six years later following the financial underperformance of the sequel to his other major IP, the musical Happy Feet (2006), which featured a tap-dancing emperor penguin striving for acceptance in his vocally oriented colony. Miller’s most recent film prior to Furiosa, Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022), only recouped a third of its $60 million production budget, a somewhat respectable outcome considering it was a maximalist fantasy romance between a narratologist and a Djinn, adapted from an A.S. Byatt short story.
A still image from Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths.”
It feels reductive to solely judge films based on their financial performance, especially when Furiosa’s box office struggles epitomize a dilemma that is both timeless and acutely contemporary. Filmmakers have lamented the industry’s obsession with opening weekend numbers since Jaws and Star Wars fundamentally reshaped studio marketing strategies. Simultaneously, a film’s immediate financial success in theaters is arguably more critical than ever in today’s rapid-cycle entertainment landscape. Furiosa’s inability to achieve significant commercial traction ultimately reveals more about the context of its release, and the studios’ increasingly frustrating short-sightedness, than about the intrinsic quality of the film itself.
The widespread defensiveness surrounding Miller and Furiosa from both fans and critics is understandable. His unique, iconoclastic vision necessitates substantial financial investment at a time when such projects are increasingly unlikely to receive adequate theatrical support. While he is not alone among filmmakers facing this challenge, it remains remarkable that a director nearing 80 can still conceive and execute such ambitious, large-scale spectacles of mayhem and imagination. Miller’s entire filmography is characterized by gonzo visual designs and emotionally resonant surrogate family dramas, and he effectively merges these elements in Furiosa’s most touching, understated moment: the title character, sensing imminent danger, clutches Jack’s head and whispers quiet reassurance as menacing, elaborately costumed biker pirates encircle them.
Ultimately, Furiosa proved to be a somewhat perplexing viewing experience. While Miller’s visually stunning, intensely color-saturated images of chaotic disorder were undeniably impressive, the fragmented narrative structure and the forced sense of grandiosity created a sense of emotional distance. Admiration wrestled with monotony until Furiosa’s climactic confrontation with Dementus, at which point the film’s emotional and thematic core finally resonated, with only moments to spare. Hemsworth’s flamboyant theatricality abruptly gives way to raw, nihilistic pain, and Taylor-Joy, who maintains remarkable restraint throughout much of the film, conveys her character’s profound heartbreak and futile rage through subtle close-ups. As the two characters contemplate the nature of vigilante justice in a world saturated with cruelty and devoid of fairness, Furiosa subtly subverts its revenge narrative by planting a literal seed of hope, a gesture that feels neither contrived nor overly sentimental. Furiosa could never surpass Fury Road, but its successes and shortcomings are in service of a vision far grander and more ambitious than most summer blockbusters even attempt to reach.
